Our overall objective is to develop and evaluate methods for the prevention and control of hospital-acquired urinary tract infections associated with the use of indwelling bladder catheters. We have established continuing daily bacteriologic monitoring of urinary drainage systems by a catheter care team and have developed a system for incorporating our bacteriologic and epidemiologic data into patient's computerized hospital records. With this system, we are able to collect, store, retrieve, and analyze the large volumes of data required for these epidemiologic studies. We propose to evaluate our monitoring system as a technic to assist in patient care, medical audit, and long-term epidemiologic study. We will define the clinical importance of catheter-induced infections by determining the incidence of gram-negative rod bacteremia attributable to catheter-associated bacteriuria. We are conducting a systematic study of methods which may help prevent catheter-associated infections in order to define practical methods that might be applied in all hospitals. We anticipate that these studies may serve as a model for the study and control of other nosocomial infection problems.